2 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



their terms of office, to carry out their ends even to the extent of sus- 

 pending the constitution getting the forced assent of the assembled 

 people, who were surrounded by armed men. And then, eventually, 

 the head executive agent, nominally reelected from time to time but 

 practically permanent, became, in the person of Cosmo de' Medici, the 

 founder of an inherited headship. 



But the liability of the compound political head to become subject 

 to its civil agents, is far less than its liability to become subject to its 

 military agents. From the earliest times this liability has been exem- 

 plified and commented upon ; and, familiar as it is, I must here illus- 

 trate and emphasize it, because it directly bears on one of the cardinal 

 truths of political theory. Setting out with the Greeks we observe, in 

 the first place, that the tyrants, by whom oligarchies were so often 

 overthrown, had armed forces at their disposal. Either the tyrant 

 was "the executive magistrate, upon whom the oligarchy themselves 

 had devolved important administrative powers," or he was a dema- 

 gogue, who pleaded the alleged interests of the community, " in or- 

 der to surround" himself "with armed defenders" soldiers beino: in 

 either case the agents of his usurpation. And then, in the second 

 place, we see the like done by the successful general. As Macchiavelli 

 remarks of the Romans : " For the further abroad they [the generals] 

 carried their arms, the more necessary such prolongations [of their 

 commissions] appeared, and the more common they became ; hence it 

 arose, in the first place, that but a few of their citizens could be em- 

 ployed in the command of armies, and consequently few were capable 

 of acquiring any considerable degree of experience or reputation ; and 

 in the next, that when a commander in chief was continued for a long 

 time in that post, he had an oj^portunity of corrupting his army to 

 such a degree that the soldiers entirely threw off their obedience to 

 the senate, and acknowledged no authority but his. To this it was 

 owing that Sylla and Marius found means to debauch their armies and 

 make them fight against their country ; and that Julius Caesar was en- 

 abled to make himself absolute in Rome." 



The Italian republics, again, furnish many illustrations. By the 

 beginning of the fourteenth century, those of Lombardy " all submit- 

 ted themselves to the military power of some nobles to whom they 

 had intrusted the command of their militias, and thus all lost their 

 liberty." Later times and nearer regions yield instances. At home 

 Cromwell showed how the successful general tends to become auto- 

 crat. In the Netherlands the same thing was exemplified by the Van 

 Arteveldes, father and son, and again by Maurice of Nassau ; and, but 

 for form's sake, it would be needless to name the case of Napoleon. 

 It should be added that not only by command of armed forces is the 

 military chief enabled to seize on supreme power, but acquired popu- 

 larity, especially in a militant nation, places him in a position which 

 makes it relatively easy to do this. Neither their own experience, nor 



